About Me

I am a 42 year old woman that is about as happy and content as one person can be. My husband of 21 years and our 15 year old daughter live on five and a half acres out in the country. We moved from the city four years ago and never looked back. I homeschool our daughter. We also love our animals. Our daughter has a miniature horse and two rabbits. We also have a border collie, two cats (again), two pot belly pigs, four peafowl, three emus, 2 llamas and an undetermined number of chickens, lets just say ohhh about 200. I have many breeds, from layers to fancy chickens. I love poultry shows, I love fowl in general as I have come to find out through having more than just chickens. Chickens will always be my first love though. I do show some of my birds occasionally.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Sleep...Sunday and Other Talk

I sure do have my hours turned around...I should be asleep. I did stay up long enough to watch Heroes, but I should have been sleepy afterwards...but was not. Cleaned up the kitchen and folded some laundry. Now I am feeling a bit sleepy, but it is almost 11:30...so that will put me at about four and a half hours of good sleep before I have to wake Ian up for work...which is just not enough, so once again I will go back to sleep from six a.m. til Phoenix decides to rise and shine...which has been anywhere from 8 to 9 a.m. Is he spoiled or what? Roosters outside have been crowing for three hours and here he is sleeping in. I can't blame him...I mean it is cold out there in the early morning light, why not just stay under the covers and in the pillows (yes, literally for him) where it is warm and dark. I don't mind him waking later...he is a good snooze button for me.

Anyway, on with the weekend happenings. Sunday we got up and Karen and I fixed eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and brown sugar and cinnamon toast with honey...with either milk or OJ to drink. After breakfast we discussed this and that...eventually I had to make the planner out for school for this week so the kids were playing games and Karen slipped off to sleep on the couch into a nice naptime. I made the most of it and got most of the planner done. I finished study sheets this morning for History, Geography and Science.

Later I set up the cake and we sang a Happy Birthday to Shelby...had yummy cake and icecream. Soon after Karen and Tiffany had to be going. Tiffany had some studying to do and I think some homework. I sent them home with two dozen eggs, two big jars of kosher pickles and some cake. After they left I started on supper...and the rest of the day was business as usual.

I did get a single pen covered and almost all of the row of five pens covered for wintertime. We have no cover here so it is essential that I button up the pens against the cold and winter. I don't use any flimsy tarp either. I get the heavy duty stuff. It can get really windy here and combined with the cold it could kill smaller chickens like my Serama. I will be getting one of those 250 watt heat bulbs to hang, probably two...since I have two pens full of Serama out there now. Speaking of which I have to get pictures of the newbies. Still havent done that. I will see about doing that in the next day or two.

I do have a bit of sad news. My young Golden Phoenix rooster of five months old is going to pass on with my help. I don't know what happened. He was fine last night when I fed and watered. Today about noon I went out to check on everyone and I found a horror. I will spare you the pictures I took of this as weak stomaches may not make it through seeing it. I took the pictures to try to get some feedback on a few chicken people friends and a chicken message board, but so far no one can tell me what has happened. You ask what happened. Well, quite frankly it looks as if he threw up his insides...his crop at least anyway. The crop is the first place food goes before it goes to the stomach...it is a kind of shall we say "waiting room" for the food to go on down the pipeline. It is hangin out of his mouth and there is nothing I can do for him...and no one can tell me why on earth such a thing would happen. There will be no recovery from this I imagine. So I will put him down out of mercy and it is the humane thing to do. He is suffering terribly I am sure.

On a lighter note...goodness I didnt mean to get so down. On a lighter note Halloween is just around the corner. Lots of candy and trick or treating in the square, games and a costume contest. Small town fun...I love it. We never did find Shelby a girl pirate costume she really wanted or liked so I guess she will just have to wear the one from last year, which was a pretty costume, nothing wrong with it, she just wanted to be something else. She is not too bummed about it though thank goodness. She is already planning next years Halloween! She wants to dress up as Hanna Montana...go figure...lol.

Here are some pictures from the weekend...

Tiffany feeding Peter his carrot, and Shelby feeding Buster his carrot...these two rabbits are spoiled already..being cuddled and hand fed.

10 comments:

Sounds like Shelby had a very nice Birthday. Beautiful cake and friends over sounds good to me. I have never heard of such a thing as what has happened to your dear rooster. Being an old country person from way back this is a first for me. Yes, it best to put him out of his pain and misery. Those are great picures. Thanks for sharing. Hugs, Helen

I have some work to do around here getting ready for winter also. I need a grill cover and to put the patio set away. Also get the snowblower moved to the front of the shed for easy access. I am sorry about your rooster. That sounds awful. Glad Shelby enjoyed her birthday. That girl Tiffany looks like a young Jennifer Aniston. Beautiful girls. Linda

Aww... poor baby you're doing the right thing for him. That's sad. When we had outside dogs. I use to have to cover all the runs with tarps and stuff because we didn't have any trees out there and that keep the snow and rain off them. Some were to silly to go in the houses. Go figure. I understand completely about the not sleeping thing. I have to wake up at 6am to get my daughter moving every morning regardless of how much sleep I've had. Lucky for me I don't have any animals or others to care for and am able to finally go to sleep at 8am when the house is quiet. I love Heroes and just watched the complete first season on G4 this weekend. It was cold and rainy outside so I stayed in and was lazy didn't do anything but get dressed, cook and laundry. Essentials you know other than that wrapped up in a blanket. Happy Birthday to your daughter. Looks like she had a good one. Cute pictures. Thanks for sharing. Hope you have a great day.Take care, Chrissie

I am sorry to hear about your Golden Phoenix, I hope you find out what happened after talking with others. How sad. It looks & sounds like Shelby had a great weekend, and the cake looked really good!!! I am so hungry right now I could eat the picture! The bunnies do look quite content with the girls. What a terrific mom you are, Shelby is lucky to have you.xoxoLisa

Kelly I am so sorry about your Golden Phoenix but you are doing the right thing in not letting him suffer ~ I do hope you will be able to find out what caused such a thing to happen ~Glad Shelby had a good Birthday and I love the pictures of her with her rabbits they are really cute ~ Ally x

Awww...I've never heard of such as your poor rooster. I'm so sorry Kelly. I hope you find out what happened to it. Shelby's cake looks delicious. I know she had a great weekend. I know you're busy getting everything ready for cold weather. Now that's job. I hope you all have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!